Songs of Innocence and of Experience
by William Blake
Introduction
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry chear.
"Piper, pipe that song again;"
So I piped: he wept to hear.
"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear!"
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read."
So he vanish'd from my sight,
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
Piping - to pipe is to play the musical instrument pipe, there are a few different kinds of pipe, such as bagpipe, or the ones shown in the picture.
glee - happiness, delight, joy.
chear - it is the old spelling for cheer, meaning gladness.
Piper is a person who plays a piper.
vanish'd (vanished) - to disappear.
pluck'd (plucked) - to pull off.
reed - here it means a stalk, a tall grass with hollow stems, made into a reed pen, see photos.
stain'd (stained) - to discolour, to dirty; here it is rhetorical because the water should be clearer than anything else, but Blake is saying the Piper makes the "water clean".
Additional Information:
This is quite a hard poem to understand even for Advanced learners, partly because poets usually uses imaginary languages to create vivid images. Their language are not really the "standard" English, nevertheless, Blake employs mainly plain and direct language, so it shouldn't be that difficult to comprehend
To pay the piper is an idiom which means to pay the consequence of something, usually a nasty outcome of one's action
Robbie the Elf
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